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Struggle for Consumer Control
The Struggle for Consumer Control was a socio-politico-econo-militant event in Old Phlogistonian history lasting at least a hundred years. In the wake of the Struggle, most global societies were forced to undergo radical and profound changes to their judicial fabric. Causes The acknowledged historical causes of the Struggle are vague and poorly documented. What is clear is that sometime well after the Rectors were in place and also after the cult of ARIAX had gained a significant following, a precedent had been established in Phlogistonian jurisprudence giving increasingly broader (and increasingly more favorable) legal interpretation to the actions of corporations. Simultaneously, partially due to these favorable interpretations, it became increasingly difficult to successfully claim damages against corporations. The Struggle began as a political movement to address the vast difference in treatment between the average individual (dubbed "Consumers" collectively in several seminal suits) and the "individuals" of the corporations. Some have suggested that the Rectors conspired with a subset of the ARIAXians to engineer the Struggle, feeling the legal imbalance to be overly disruptive to the fabric of Phlogistonian society. If that is indeed the case, then certainly the Struggle can be called one of the Rectors' greatest missteps. Escalation Near the end of the first decade of the Struggle, a terrorist group emerged calling themselves simply "Consumers." Their targets primarily consisted of means of production and corporate headquarters, their only statements to officials being variations on the intent to "murder corporations." It took several years for law enforcement to track down the group's leaders, but eventually they were captured without major incident. In their pre-trial hearings, these men and women each submitted a motion to dismiss all charges on the grounds that while it was illegal for an individual to commit crimes against other individuals, a strong precendent had been established that corporations, also considered individuals, were rarely at fault for gross acts of endangerment and violence committed against large groups of people. Their argument continued that from the beginning they had consistently affected the "community" comprised of corporations, and therefore no single individual in the group was at fault. To the shock of everyone except the legal community, Judge Welford allowed each motion to pass and all charges were dropped. What followed were decades of civil violence as each individual consumer began to enjoy the same unimpeachable martial force that had previously belonged solely to corporations. Any action had become legally permissible so long as its scale was large enough and it was implemented by small numbers of individuals. Chaos reigned. End of the Struggle Initially law enforcement continued to combat the increasingly violent outbursts of the citizenry. Their hope was to put defendants before judges and establish new precendents while lawmakers worked to close loopholes. However, perhaps under corporate influence, every judge who got his or her hands on such a case only strengthened the precendent of immunity. Initially, this newfound freedom was only taken advantage of by terrorist groups incorporating to avoid prosecution. However, white collar criminals and some of the larger gangs, when faced with the prosect of their "consumer" crimes being uncovered, soon began turning to large-scale destruction of property and successfully making the case that their smaller trespasses were merely effects of their larger, corporate crimes and therefore unpunishable. Phlogistonian society nearly crumbled in the last, bloody decade of the Struggle. Many attempts were made to control the populace, perhaps most notably the compulsory adoption of WITs. None proved effective. Things changed drastically after one Markus Yanling, an accountant with no prior connections to any gang or terrorist organization, went before a judge for a speeding ticket and made the claim that he was speeding due to a heretofore undiscovered plot on his part to poison the city's water supply. When the judge accepted this argument, and praised the ticketing officer for his insight into preventative enforcement, it became clear to influential non-goverment powers that law was effectively dead. Judges were placed under citizen's arrest across the country and the goverment was dissolved within the year. Seeing the strife befallen Phlogistonia, the other nations of the world made a concerted effort to subjugate corporations globally. A few particularly powerful corporations proved difficult to excise, however. In a bid to preserve themselves, the leading corporations sued the governments of the world for peace. The treaty they arrived at formed Worldcorp, a nation whose only citizenry would be corporations and the only corporate entity allowed to interact with the outside world ever again. Between the rebuilding of Phlogistonia and the rise of Francois Baptiste in Carthage, historians would later declare this era the end of the Tenebrous Period. See Also ARIAX Rectors of Old Phlogiston Worldcorp WITs